The Streets of Ascalon. Chambers Robert William
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and comfortable when I am with him.
"He says very little; I say even less. But it is agreeable to be with him.
"He is middle-aged, and, I imagine, very wise. Perhaps his reticence makes me think so. He and Mr. Wycherly shoot ducks on the lagoon – and politics into each other.
"I must go. You are not here to persuade me to stay and talk nonsense to you against my better judgment. You're quite helpless, you see. So I'm off.
"Will you write to me again?
A week after Quarren had answered her letter O'Hara called his attention to a paragraph in a morning paper which hinted at an engagement between Sir Charles Mallison and Mrs. Leeds.
Next day's paper denied it on excellent authority; so, naturally, the world at large believed the contrary.
Southern news also revealed the interesting item that the yacht, Yulan, belonging to Mrs. Sprowl's hatchet-faced nephew, Langly Sprowl, had sailed from Miami for the West Indies with the owner and Mrs. Leeds and Sir Charles Mallison among the guests.
The Yulan had not as fragrant a reputation as its exotic name might signify, respectable parties being in the minority aboard her, but Langly Sprowl was Langly Sprowl, and few people declined any invitation of his.
He was rather a remarkable young man, thin as a blade, with a voracious appetite and no morals. Nor did he care whether anybody else had any. What he wanted he went after with a cold and unsensitive directness that no newspapers had been courageous enough to characterise. He wouldn't have cared if they had.
Among other things that he had wanted, recently, was another man's wife. The other man being of his own caste made no difference to him; he simply forced him to let his wife divorce him; which, it was understood, that pretty young matron was now doing as rapidly as the laws of Nevada allowed.
Meanwhile Langly Sprowl had met Strelsa Leeds.
The sailing of the Yulan for the West Indies became the topic of dinner and dance gossip; and Quarren heard every interpretation that curiosity and malice could put upon the episode.
He had been feeling rather cheerful that day; a misguided man from Jersey City had suddenly developed a mania for a country home. Quarren personally conducted him all over Tappan-Zee Park on the Hudson, through mud and slush in a skidding touring car, with the result that the man had become a pioneer and had promised to purchase a building site.
So Quarren came back to the Legation that afternoon feeling almost buoyant, and discovered Westguard in all kinds of temper, smoking a huge faïence pipe which he always did when angry, and which had become known as "The Weather-breeder."
"Jetzt geht das Wetter los!" quoted Quarren, dropping into a seat by the fire. "Where is this particular area of low depression centred, Karl?"
"Over my damn book. The papers insist it's a livre-à-clef; and I am certain the thing is selling on that account! I tell you it's humiliating. I've done my best as honestly as I know how, and not one critic even mentions the philosophy of the thing; all they notice is the mere story and the supposed resemblance between my characters and living people! I'm cursed if I ever – "
"Oh, shut up!" said Quarren tranquilly. "If you're a novelist you write to amuse people, and you ought to be thankful that you've succeeded."
"Confound it!" roared Westguard, "I write to instruct people! not to keep 'em from yawning!"
"Then you've made a jolly fluke of it, that's all – because you have accidentally written a corking good story – good enough and interesting enough to make people stand for the cold chunks of philosophical admonition with which you've spread your sandwich – thinly, Heaven be praised!"
"I write," said Westguard, furious, "because I've a message to deliv – "
"Help!" moaned Quarren. "You write because it's in you to do it; because you've nothing more interesting to do; and because it enables you to make a decent and honourable living!"
"Do those reasons prevent my having a message to deliver?" roared Westguard.
"No, they exist in spite of it. You'd write anyway, whether or not you believed you had a message to deliver. You've written some fifteen novels, and fifteen times you have smothered your story with your message. This time, by accident, the story got its second breath, and romped home, with 'Message' a bad second, and that selling plater, 'Philosophy,' left at the post – "
"Go on! – you irreverent tout!" growled Westguard; "I want my novels read, of course. Any author does. But I wish to Heaven somebody would try to interpret the important lessons which I – "
"Oh, preciousness and splash! Tell your story as well as you can, and if it's well done there'll be latent lessons enough in it."
"Are you perhaps instructing me in my own profession?" asked the other, smiling.
"Heaven knows I'm not venturing – "
"Heaven knows you are! Also there is something In what you say – " He sat smoking, thoughtfully, eyes narrowing in the fire – "if I only could manage that! – to arrest the public's attention by the rather cheap medium of the story, and then, cleverly, shoot a few moral pills into 'em… That's one way, of course – "
"Like the drums of the Salvation Army."
Westguard looked around at him, suspiciously, but Quarren seemed to be serious enough.
"I suppose it doesn't matter much how a fellow collects an audience, so that he does collect one."
"Exactly," nodded Quarren. "Get your people, then keep 'em interested and unsuspecting while you inject 'em full of thinks."
Westguard smoked and pondered; but presently his lips became stern and compressed.
"I don't intend to trifle with my convictions or make any truce or any compromise with 'em," he announced. "I'm afraid that this last story of mine ran away with me."
"It sure did, old Ironsides. Heaven protected her own this time. And in 'The Real Thing' you have ridden farther out among the people with your Bible and your Sword than you ever have penetrated by brandishing both from the immemorial but immobile battlements of righteousness. Truth is a citadel, old fellow; but its garrison should be raiders, not defenders. And they should ride far afield to carry its message. For few journey to that far citadel; you must go to them. And does it make any difference what vehicle you employ in the cause of Truth – so that the message arrives somewhere before your vehicle breaks down of its own heaviness? Novel or poem, sermon or holy writ – it's all one, Karl, so that they get there with their burden."
Westguard sat silent a moment, then thumped the table, emphatically.
"If I had your wasted talents," he said, "I could write anything!"
"Rot!"
"As you please. You use your ability rottenly – that's true enough."
"My ability," mimicked Quarren.
"Yes, your many, many talents, Rix. God knows why He gave them to you; I don't – for you use them ignobly, when you do not utterly neglect them – "
"I've a light and superficial talent for entertaining people; I've nimble legs, and possess a low order of intelligence known as 'tact.' What more have I?"
"You're the best amateur actor in New York, for example."
"An amateur," sneered Quarren. "That is to say, a man who has the inclinations, but neither the courage, the self-respect, nor the ambition of the professional… Well, I admit that. I lack something – courage, I think. I prefer what is easy. And I'm doing it."
"What's your reward?" said Westguard bluntly.
"Reward? Oh, I don't know. The inner temple. I have the run of the premises. People like me, trust me, depend upon me more or less. The intrigues and politics of my little world amuse me; now and then I act as ambassador, as envoy of peace, as herald, as secret diplomatic agent… Reward? Oh, yes – you didn't suppose that my real-estate operations clothed and fed me, did you, Karl?"
"What